LCD790 – 02/09/09

1. LCD790 – 02/09/09 Developing research topics Classroom research Case studies

2. Announcements • Groups on Blackboard • Discussion board • File sharing • E-mails (update your e-mail address on BB Home tab, under Tools > Update Email) • Literature search: see slides on Blackboard • How to use CUNY catalog, interlibrary loan, databases (LLBA), google scholar

3. Today • Models of reading (see ppt last week) • Developing research topics • Research in classroom settings • Case studies

4. Identifying research questions(or hypotheses) Research questions should be • Interesting (address current issues) • Sufficiently narrow so they can be answered • Research questions need to be answered • Hypotheses are expectations, based on what is known

5. Where to start? Where do research questions come from? • Research papers • Suggestions for further research • Limitations • Whatever you thought was missing from the paper • Identifying gaps in the literature and existing research • Your own experience (from teaching, learning, …) Review the literature: Has the question been investigated before? What do we already know, and what don’t we know?

6. Is my idea feasible? • Can your question be answered (not too broad?) • Can you obtain the data? (e.g., are participants available?) • Are there other practical issues (time, money, technology)

7. Replication • Results from a study need to be replicable • Verification • Generalizability • Replicating instruments, procedures, etc. is fairly easy • Replicating students’ background is more difficult • Continuum: virtual – conceptual • Virtual: Everything copied as much as possible • Conceptual: Testing the same ‘concept’ but in a different setting or with a different type of participants (generalizability!) • If the replication finds different results: • Findings weren’t generalizable, or • Replication wasn’t good?

8. Example of feedback observation scheme: • Source • Type • Target • Uptake

9. Informed consent • Informed consent • Consent from students, parents, teachers, school administration • Including permission to view grades, if applicable • NNSs must be able to read the consent forms (simple English, L1 or interpreter) • Don’t “bribe” with too much compensation • No pressure to participate! • Debriefing • Confidentiality • IRB approval

10. What is a case study? • Usually qualitative research, so: • Research questions tend to be general and open-ended; hypotheses may be generated (instead of confirmed/disconfirmed) • There is less control over variables (less generalizable), but the setting is more natural • Rich description is necessary to describe the background of the subjects, for instance • Cyclical and open-ended process: It’s possible to adjust or add research questions during analysis (or even during data collection, if it’s longitudinal)

11. What is a case study? • Detailed descriptions of specific learners/classes within their learning setting • Rich contextualization; examine complexities of the second language learning process • Usually longitudinal • Possible: compare more than one learner / group of learners • Compare and contraste behaviors within particular contexts • The researcher must be careful about the generalizations drawn from the study (few participants, not randomly chosen!) • Solution: Combine multiple longitudinal case studies

12. Next class (Feb. 23) • Read Jimenez et al. (1995) • Example of case study on bilingual reading development) • Focus on questions in Assignment 1 (not to hand in) • Bring to class RQ(s) that are doable and worthwhile • E-mail me: partner & topic